PQ&A – USITT at the 2019 PQ: Josafath Reynoso (interview)
Josafath Reynoso is a Mexican scenographer and Scenic Designer currently working in the US as a freelance designer and an Assistant Professor at the University of Richmond. He holds an MFA in Scenic Design from UT Knoxville and a BFA in Scenography from Escuela Nacional de Arte Teatral. Regional venues include: Triad Stage, Virginia Sage Company, Alice Jepson Theatre, Clarence Brown Theatre, Lexington Children’s Theatre, Donald Bedell Performance Hall, among others. International venues include: Teatro del Borde (Argentina), Escena 8 (Venezuela), KCDC (Israel), Teatro Salvador Novo (Mexico), Industrial Palace (Czech Republic), among others.
Winner of the 2017 Gold Medal at World Stage Design in Taiwan, 2015 USITT National Scene Design Award, 2014 SETC Scenic Design Award, 2013 BroadwayWorld Award, and the SETC Ready-for-Work Award, among many others.
He was selected as curator for the exhibit Mexico Rising: New exponents of performance design at USITT 2018, keynote speaker at Stage|Set|Scenery (Berlin), presenter at the International Biennale of Architecture (Buenos Aires), one of fifteen designers selected to present at 2015 USITT Young Designer’s Forum and the 2015 National Design Portfolio Review in NYC. He has represented the US in Germany, and Wales; and Mexico in Taiwan, the Czech Republic and Venezuela.
PQ&A is USITT’s companion podcast to the US Exhibition at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial. It is hosted by Ian Garrett, lead curator for the exhibition. On PQ&A Ian talks with the featured designers in the US Exhibition about their background, inspirations, and what gives them their unique world view.
In the exhibition for 2019 we wanted to recognize that the United States is a nation of immigrants, and celebrate our diversity… most people in the US can identify immigrant roots. Those immigrant roots, together with the people that can trace their ancestry back to more than 500 Native American tribes, we refer to as this the cultural DNA of the artists who create the work in our communities.
This rich cultural diversity and wisdom contributes to the creativity, ingenuity, and knowledge that we find inspirational. So, iIn addition to the selected work, the exhibition incorporates the oral history of the designers, positioning them in relationship to the field and their own work.
For this podcast, I talk to the designers about their background, their connection to performance design, their mentors and influencers, who they have mentored and influenced, and how these factors have affected their approach to design and scenography.
